Abstract:
The usage of images transferring through the internet is dramatically increasing in today's
digital era. These images are vulnerable to hacking and tamper by attackers. Securing
publicly available images over untrusted internet is necessary to protect against network
intruders. Nowadays, various encryption and decryption algorithms (RSA and DH) are
available to offer a good level of security. However, in these algorithms, the size of the
encryption key is large and much slower. Thereby Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) is a
better alternative, and it provides equal security with smaller key sizes. But, the private key
is an issue unless chosen optimally. We used the Cuckoo Search (CS) algorithm to optimize
the best private key to fill this gap, Lempel Ziv and Welch (LZW) algorithm for
compression, compressed byte values converted into large numbers, and Net Bean IDE 8.2
for implementation and performance analysis. Based on the simulation result, the proposed
algorithm improves the original ECC image (keys generation time by 23.6%, encryption
time by 95.7%, decryption time by 102.1%, the overall processing time base on bit length by
45.9%, and the overall processing time base on image size by 111.9%). As a result of the
performance investigation, the proposed algorithm is very fast and secure.
